Benita Valente

Benita Valente is a paragon of lyric soprano virtue. For 30 years, while others beefed their voices up and pushed them out of shape in order to tackle dramatic repertory, Valente has steadfastly preserved and protected the resources nature actually gave her. Saturday night at the South Bay Center for the Arts at El Camino College, a small, appreciative audience savored the fruits of the soprano's lifelong avoidance of the "I'm gonna sing Butterfly or bust" syndrome.

It seems almost laughable now, the founding of the Music Academy of the West here, 50 years ago, by the then-music critic of this paper, Isabel Morse Jones. For the previous decade Los Angeles had been, by any reasonable standards, one of the most important musical cities in the world.

"At one of the turning points in my life--and there have been several," Benita Valente remembers, "I was supposed to sing Sophie in a production of 'Rosenkavalier' at the Music Academy of the West (in Santa Barbara)," as well as participate in other summer activities there. "When I found out they had given the part to someone else, I was so angry I didn't go at all, but accepted an invitation to spend the summer at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont."

Mystifying. That's what observers on the scene call her career. "And I agree with them," says Benita Valente, the sedately beauteous soprano who opens Wednesday night in the Music Center Opera production of "Orfeo ed Euridice." All her adult life she's been a connoisseur's singer--known for her impeccable musicianship, poetic sensibility and ravishing silvery-toned voice--a no-nonsense professional and a trouper.

Mystifying. That's what observers on the scene call her career. "And I agree with them," says Benita Valente, the sedately beauteous soprano who opens Wednesday night in the Music Center Opera production of "Orfeo ed Euridice." All her adult life she's been a connoisseur's singer--known for her impeccable musicianship, poetic sensibility and ravishing silvery-toned voice--a no-nonsense professional and a trouper.

It seems almost laughable now, the founding of the Music Academy of the West here, 50 years ago, by the then-music critic of this paper, Isabel Morse Jones. For the previous decade Los Angeles had been, by any reasonable standards, one of the most important musical cities in the world.

Soprano Benita Valente will replace Jill Gomez on the Pacific Symphony programs Wednesday and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Gomez, a citizen of Great Britain, was not able to get a work visa in time for the concerts, according to a spokesman for the orchestra . The revised program will include three of Mahler's five "Ruckert" Lieder ("Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder," "Ich atmet' eine Linden Duft" and "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen") and Mozart's "Exsultate, Jubilate."

The deeply coherent program that Jorge Mester put together Saturday for his Pasadena Symphony and soprano Benita Valente embraced folk music as a unifying power--a wondrous one, in the 20-Century context at hand. After all, it was the sweet pathos and aching innocence of such music that inspired Mahler, whose Fourth Symphony became the evening's focus at Civic Auditorium, as well as Canteloube, whose "Songs of the Auvergne" served as a preface. Even Henry Cowell's "Hymn and Fuguing Tune" No.

Everything was right about the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concert at Ambassador Auditorium on Saturday: the balanced, unhackneyed program, the vitality and warmth of Sir Charles Mackerras' conducting, the trio of soloists. Above all there was the orchestra itself, playing with the sort of strong, compact, projectile ensemble tone that commands the listener's attention at every turn.

Looking to the East is really looking to the West. When the ever-provincial Northeastern music establishment peers to Asia, as it so fashionably does these days, it still tends to head across the Atlantic to Europe and keep going.

Benita Valente is a paragon of lyric soprano virtue. For 30 years, while others beefed their voices up and pushed them out of shape in order to tackle dramatic repertory, Valente has steadfastly preserved and protected the resources nature actually gave her. Saturday night at the South Bay Center for the Arts at El Camino College, a small, appreciative audience savored the fruits of the soprano's lifelong avoidance of the "I'm gonna sing Butterfly or bust" syndrome.

"At one of the turning points in my life--and there have been several," Benita Valente remembers, "I was supposed to sing Sophie in a production of 'Rosenkavalier' at the Music Academy of the West (in Santa Barbara)," as well as participate in other summer activities there. "When I found out they had given the part to someone else, I was so angry I didn't go at all, but accepted an invitation to spend the summer at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont."

Nestled into the idyllic Miraflores estate, close to the beach but in its own world, the Music Academy of the West is one of those deceptively calm, internally high-pressure, high-yield places in Santa Barbara. Half a century has passed since the Music Academy launched its program, starting a tradition that has given Santa Barbara an international presence in the classical music world.

It was time again for another tryout Wednesday at Segerstrom Hall, and conductor Carl St. Clair made the most of the opportunity. As the latest candidate for the Pacific Symphony's music director position, St. Clair, an assistant conductor for the Boston Symphony, was a compelling presence. The first half of the concert, however, belonged largely to soprano Benita Valente, a late replacement for the scheduled Jill Gomez who had unexpected problems obtaining a visa.